Sticks and Stones (the end)

There is no longer a bond between Maddy and I. The poor girl has been emotionally ripped apart, with a father expecting a baby from a horrible stepmother, a mother expecting a baby from a horrible stepfather, a broken education and two more broken bones.
She hasn’t written for ages, telling me that what she wrote before was rubbish. Her artwork has suffered and her chances of a private education in England, that she so deserves, are dwindling with every second count of funds, and she’s depressed; all this at the tender age of eleven.
Griff is getting on well at school and has been made football captain.
Suzie waits for solutions to appear and promises to make money on the stock market when she has the time, having invested in one of those ridiculous ‘Make Money Guaranteed’ schemes that require fifteen minutes of work a day.
Clara has become more confused in our emotional disentanglement as I become more desperate to cut my ties with Suzie, who has become a vicious witch.
Hopefully, the baby inside is blissfully unaware.
Clara had just gone to sleep when I left, cursing Suzie as I walked through her room, where little Griff lay awake.
It is with pain that I end this, because I know I have failed everyone, me included.
Writing only helps those prepared to help themselves, and I’m not helping myself by writing this any more.
I am the owner of the guilt that I can’t get rid of unless I give up the life I lead. If I don’t listen to my better nature, my mind will wither like a drinker’s liver and I will become the destitute loser I have been frightened of becoming all my life.
Through my own fault, I will become a social outcast measured in disrespect against the wasted hopes that my loved ones ever had for me.
Abstinence, in all its forms, is the only alternative.
With abstinence comes possibility, and with continued abstinence (assuming that I don’t become a dry drunk, a fate worse than death) comes probability. Probability relies on fortune, and with fortune, there is light and a good education for the children.
When I was sober for just over a year, from Armistice Day 1997 to Valentines’ Day 1999, I felt my life had changed, so much so that I decided to have a spliff and a beer with an old friend.
From then on, I have slowly spiralled down the lonely cyclical drum of alcohol and dope.
At first, with my body and mind replenished, going out was fun and new again, but the gambling came back and with it went my time, money and pride.
I first met Suzie soon after going back on the sauce and we had the most beautiful baby in the world. I have tried and failed to integrate into her household and regret my ways.
In the end, Suzie gave birth to a beautiful baby girl in Lavaur.
However much I tried to get them back to England before giving birth (I put down deposits on two houses, both of which were non-refundable and both of which she reneged on), she could not leave the house in Giroussens, dreading the return to England.
I went back to Woking in April of that year, 2006, and took a bedsit, from where I worked as a jobbing painter, sending over most of my wages to tide the family over.
My money ran out in May, having lasted all of nine months since the sale of the house, and Suzie ran out in June.
I took out a large loan from a bank and sold the Skoda in July, returning to France to be with the family for the birth of our second wondrous child together. Suzie called her India and gave her the fictitious surname that she went by after divorcing her first husband.
She has denied me parental responsibility to either of the children ever since.
I am now homeless, but continue to pay maintenance to keep the family safe and out of harm’s way, but I can no longer see the children until I have proved my worth to the family court.
Suzie doesn’t want me to be a part of my children’s lives and believes that I am not of sound mind.
A few months ago, I saw Clara in the street with Maddy on her way to school and ran up to her, but she blanked me. I’ve never been allowed to take India out on my own because Suzie reckons she’ll run into the road and be killed. She says that I can’t be trusted.
I continue to drink, smoke and gamble and am awaiting funding for non-residential rehabilitation, which is now unlikely because the Tories are in power and Labour have spent the public purse.
If I don’t change now, I’ll be like this for the rest of my life; no better than a whore waiting for the dreaded flick-knife to appear on the back seat of a Mondeo.
‘Won’t you send me a nursery rhyme,
To keep me quiet when you’re on fire.
Please just send me a nursery rhyme,
To keep me quiet while I’m inside.
I won’t let you fall in love,
You know inside the baby knows.
I won’t let you fall in love,
You know inside the baby knows, the baby knows, the baby knows’.
Psyence Fiction.